hopped down, dusting off her hands on her skirt.
“I didn’t hear it—Beck did. Beck hears everything.”
“Well, so do I, especially where my daughters are concerned,” the judge said. “I had an earful from Mr. Gundy, Hollis, after you put those ideas into his daughter’s head about teaching. The poor thing is making an application to Eton!”
“She’s a cake,” Caroline said.
“Why should she not?” Hollis asked. “Teaching seems an infinitely more agreeable occupation than cleaning chamber pots, is it not?”
“I assure you that Miss Gundy was never, not a single day in her life, destined for the chamber pot. And why would she be allowed to teach at a school that she cannot attend?”
“That, Pappa, is precisely the problem. As if that is somehow her fault! Perhaps if women began to teach at Eton, they might one day attend Eton.”
“For heaven’s sake, you and your fanciful ideas about the world,” he said, as if she was a young girl with dreams of becoming a faerie. Hollis bit her tongue to keep from saying something she would probably regret.
“Beck said you were trying to obtain a ship’s manifest,” Caroline said. “Whatever for?”
Hollis huffed a breath of exasperation. “Did Mr. Kettle leave his carrot and skip off and report everything I said to Beck? How does he even know Beck?”
“I don’t know what a carrot has to do with anything, but Beck is friends with the secretary. You know that. He heard it from Lord Palmerston, and later, Donovan confirmed it was true. Really, Hollis—why do you want a ship’s manifest?”
“To know who has come, obviously,” Hollis said, feeling a bit defensive. That sounded ridiculous, but she didn’t think this was the time to explain all her goals and ideas.
“Why?” Eliza pressed.
“I should like to speak to some Weslorians, if you must know. One can’t write a proper story without speaking to everyone involved.”
“A proper story about what?” Eliza asked suspiciously, shifting around on the settee to stare at her younger sister.
Well, this was going poorly, and Hollis didn’t like the way everyone was looking at her. Even Ben and Margaret, quiet as a pair of mice in the back of the room, appeared concerned. “About...some rumors,” Hollis said vaguely.
“Hollis,” Caroline said, her fair eyebrows sinking into a frown.
Hollis put up a hand before they could lecture her. “I know you think I’m out of place, but on my word, I’ve heard things that are unsettling.” They didn’t look convinced. “And then I saw a man at the tea who was clearly out of place.” She probably shouldn’t have said it precisely in that way, but when one was trying to make a point, well...there it was.
“What man?” Caroline looked concerned.
“A Weslorian gentleman. He looked like a sailor. Or a lumberman.” What was she saying? She sounded mad to even herself. “I mean that he was broadly built. Muscular.”
“What has that to do with anything?” Caroline asked.
Caroline and Eliza were looking at her quite closely. Hollis averted her gaze. It had to do with everything. He was unusual and a bit fascinating. She didn’t mention Mr. Brendan’s starkly amber eyes or his square jaw. She didn’t say that his gaze seemed to land on her mouth more often than not, and that his hair was long and brushed back behind his ears, contrary to current fashion. She didn’t say that, like her, he’d been a single person in a room where alliances seemed to be everything, and yet seemed determined not to make a single acquaintance. And she certainly didn’t say that she found him attractive and was surprised that she did.
When she’d introduced herself and thanked him for helping her at the gates, he’d looked so serious, so intent. But in those golden-brown eyes, she’d noticed something else. A tentativeness, almost as if he didn’t speak her language, when clearly, he did. She’d sensed his uncertainty for a second time that day and it contradicted the strength he exuded just by breathing.
“I didn’t see anyone like that,” Eliza said. “Hollis, I can’t guess what you are involving yourself in, but you have no right to do it.”
“But you don’t know what I mean to do,” Hollis said. “None of you do. Would you not agree that if there is trouble afoot, should it not be brought out into the open?”
“Not by you,” her father said instantly. “Leave it to the men.”
“Pappa!” Eliza cried at the same time Caroline said, “Your Honor!”
“Men don’t know everything there is to know,” Poppy snorted.
“You all know